[Sarah Jane Adventures 08] - The Day of The Clown

by Phil Ford

  ‘Run!’ she yelled, and followed the three kids out of the door towards her car.

  Rani pulled the phone from her pocket as she ran towards the little car. ‘It’s my Mum!’

  ‘Don’t answer it!’ Luke told her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You can’t tell her what just happened!’

  ‘I don’t know what happened!’ she said, looking back at the museum, and silencing the phone.

  There was no sign of Odd Bob following, but Sarah Jane thought it wouldn’t be long before he came after them.

  The phone’s electromagnetic wave must have temporarily interfered with Spellman’s energies. They must have a similar frequency. Quickly, in the car!’

  Sarah Jane had the car open, Luke and Clyde piled in, but Rani hesitated. ‘Isn’t someone going to tell me what’s going on?’

  Sarah Jane glared at her across the car’s roof. ‘Rani, there’s a time and a place for an interview. And being chased by a clown from outer space is most definitely not it!’

  Sarah Jane jumped behind the wheel, Rani took one last confused look back at the museum and got into the car, her head whirling with questions — but Sarah Jane wouldn’t say anything until a few minutes later when they were back in Bannerman Road. Which was when her mum rang the mobile again. The baby-voice version of the Kylie song set Clyde’s teeth on edge.

  ‘Okay, annoying ring tones have their uses — I think we’ve all learned that today. But they are still annoying,’ he complained.

  ‘It’s my mum,’ Rani said as they got out of the car on Sarah Jane’s drive. ‘What do I tell her?’

  ‘You’re on your way home,’ Sarah Jane told her.

  Rani couldn’t believe she was hearing it. ‘Just like that? You expect me to go home?’

  Sarah Jane was heading for her front door, as if the subject was closed.

  But Luke was on Rani’s side. ‘Mum, I think you have to tell her everything.’

  Sarah Jane spun around, staring. ‘No, I told you. Both of you…’

  Clyde winced as the phone continued to wail the baby-song. ‘Please, Sarah Jane. That phone is doing my head in!’

  Sarah Jane took Rani’s phone and turned it off, then she stood for a moment without saying anything, just looking into Rani’s eyes, as if she were trying to see something beyond them.

  ‘I’m going to offer you a choice,’ she said eventually. ‘Cross over the road, go back to your parents and the life you had before you moved here. And nothing will have changed.’

  Rani glanced from Sarah Jane to Luke and Clyde who stood a little way off, watching. She tried to read their faces, to understand what she was on the edge of here…

  ‘Or you can come with me,’ said Sarah Jane. ‘If you do that, nothing will ever be the same again.’

  Chapter Eight

  The attic

  There was never really any question, and of course Sarah Jane had known as much, Rani was never going to go back across the road and forget about what she had seen that day Some people would. Some people would lie to themselves and deny the evidence of their own eyes to preserve their narrow-minded view of reality But Sarah Jane had known that Rani wasn’t like that. When she had looked into her eyes on the driveway she had seen something that she knew well — a look in the tall girl’s eyes that Sarah Jane saw every time she caught her own reflection in a mirror.

  And now she led Rani into the attic, and watched with a delight that she tried to hide as the new girl from across the road took in the room with eyes like saucers.

  ‘How cool is this? This is where you work?’ she asked, her eyes skimming around the attic — from Sarah Jane’s cluttered workstation to the old dentists’ chair by the attic window and the telescope that stood with it — from the bookshelves that held everything from scientific manuals to old tomes on myths and legends, to the old long cased clock by the door — from the heavyweight safe in the wall to a collection of strangely shaped metallic objects that Rani couldn’t even begin to guess at their identity.

  She picked up one of the objects, ‘What’s this?’ Quickly but gently, Sarah Jane took it from her. ‘That’s a distress beacon from a Cylethian scoutship. If you’re not careful with it you could have an inter-galactic rescue team landing on the corner of Bannerman Road. You might be a hundred and fourteen by the time they got here — Cylith is a very long way off — but they would come.’

  ‘Aliens?’ Rani asked, shaking her head. ‘More aliens? Okay, any second now and my alarm is going to go off and it’s my second day at Park Vale. A new school with your dad as the Head — any one would have nutty dreams.’

  Over Sarah Jane’s shoulder she could see Clyde and Luke smiling. For an instant Rani thought maybe this was all some really big joke they were playing on her. But how could it be? That clown thing had been following her for days. She didn’t know how any of it could be real — but it was.

  ‘All right, Rani, this is what we do,’ said Sarah Jane, fixing her with serious gaze. ‘When aliens come to Earth — and they do, all the time — if they are friendly and they need help, we’re here to give it.’

  Clyde sat down on the steps of the attic where it split into two levels. ‘On the other hand, if they’re looking for trouble, we give ‘em that, too.’

  Sarah Jane flashed him a scolding look. ‘I wouldn’t have put it quite like that.’

  ‘But we have saved the world twelve times,’ said Luke.

  Rani gaped, ‘For real?’

  Sarah Jane shrugged. ‘No one is keeping score.’

  ‘Except for Luke,’ said Clyde.

  Luke flashed Clyde a look and Clyde beamed back one of his big grins.

  ‘What’s important are the rules,’ Sarah Jane said. We look after each other. We respect all life — whatever planet it is from — and we tell no one what we do. Do you understand, Rani? No one.’

  ‘Yeah. I understand.’

  Oh, yeah. She really understood all of this. This morning all she had to worry about was a new school and the possibility that she might have been going mad. Now she was in the middle of some weird Ealing version of Men in Black!

  Sarah Jane turned from Rani, ‘Mr Smith, I need you.’

  Rani caught the movement in the brickwork out of the corner of her eye. As she spun towards it she could hear hydraulic engines somewhere behind the wall thundering into life.

  Oh, no! This just could not get any weirder!

  Clouds of gas escaped from the void that opened in the brickwork.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  Clyde had got up from the step and now stood beside her, ‘Don’t worry, it’s only Mr Smith.’

  And Mr Smith slid into view.

  ‘Yes, Sarah Jane, how can I help you?’ Mr Smith asked.

  ‘It’s a computer!’ Rani gasped. ‘A talking computer! You’ve got a talking computer in your wall!’

  ‘Actually he’s a Xylok,’ Clyde corrected Rani. ‘A crystalline life form. Just about the smartest in the galaxy. But computer is close enough.

  ‘A supercomputer.’

  Luke looked at Rani and smiled. ‘Do you know your mouth is open?’

  Rani shut it quickly, but still gazed in wonder as Sarah Jane approached Mr Smith.

  ‘I need you to tell me everything you know about the Pied Piper, and a clown called Odd Bob.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr Smith, ‘this has to do with the children that have gone missing.’

  ‘Yeah. Pied Piper kind of gives it away, Mr Smith,’ taunted Clyde.

  ‘He’s an alien supercomputer, and you cheek him?’ Rani asked, a part of her still trying to tell herself that this was just some crazy dream. Probably something Dad cooked up. It made more sense than any of this being real.

  ‘Me and Mr Smith have got a sort of special relationship,’ Clyde was telling her proudly. ‘Since he kidnapped me and tried to destroy the planet. Oh, but everything is cool now.’

  And Rani’s mind did cartwheels.

  But Mr Smith was speak
ing again. ‘Actually, the name Odd Bob is equally significant. Across America in the period 1932 to 1940 there was a spate of disappearances of children all connected to a travelling clown known as Odd Bob.’

  As Mr Smith spoke his big screen carried images of old American newspaper cuttings. Photograph after photograph of children that went missing and were never found.

  Sarah Jane absorbed this information solemnly, ‘So many…’

  ‘What about the Pied Piper?’ Rani asked without thinking.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve been introduced,’ said Mr Smith.

  ‘This is Rani,’ Sarah Jane explained. ‘She’s… just visiting. What about the Pied Piper?’

  Mr Smith’s screen began to carry images of the fairytale character, among them the one that was hanging in Spellman’s museum.

  ‘A legendary figure that in 1284 rid the German town of Hamelin of a plague of rats by means of a magical tune. When the town refused to pay his fee he enchanted away all its children.

  ‘The story has become known as a fairytale, but it is a matter of historical fact that Hamelin lost its children.’

  ‘Whoa!’ Rani exploded. ‘You mean it’s true?’

  ‘Fairy stories and legends often have some basis in fact,’ Clyde told Rani, trying to look learned.

  Sarah Jane caught his eye and smiled, then dug out Clyde’s ticket to the circus museum and placed it on the computer’s analysis tray and asked Mr Smith if he could identify any alien energy ‘There is an energy trace, but I am unable to identify with no comparable data for analysis.’ Clyde whistled, that meant this was something from way off, he told Rani.

  But Sarah Jane wasn’t done yet. She asked Mr Smith to show her the historical extra-terrestrial records for Lower Saxony in the Thirteenth Century. Instantly the computer’s big screen was filled with an ancient map of Germany that showed Hamelin. Over it were superimposed graphics that indicated meteor impacts and known alien landings of the period.

  Luke spotted something: there had been an impact in the Weserbergland Mountains, not far from Hamelin.

  Mr Smith told them that a meteor fragment had landed there in 1283.

  Rani felt a thrill of excitement. ‘The year before the Piper appeared! Yes! The Piper was in the meteor! Result!’

  But Mr Smith came back, like a teacher unimpressed by an answer in class. ‘The meteor had a circumference of thirty point two centimetres. An unlikely spacecraft, Rani.’

  Rani felt crushed, but Sarah Jane couldn’t help but admire her enthusiasm, and flashed a warm smile.

  ‘All the same,’ Sarah Jane said to Mr Smith, ‘what do we know about it?’

  ‘The meteorite is currently on loan to the UK.’ Clyde gasped, ‘You mean it’s here?’

  ‘He came with it,’ said Luke.

  ‘Perhaps,’ continued Mr Smith, ‘if I were able to analyse a fragment, I could provide more information on the energy sample.’

  Sarah Jane asked Mr Smith for the meteorite’s whereabouts.

  ‘The Pharos Institute,’ he said.

  Sarah Jane raised an eyebrow and exchanged a look with Clyde and Luke.

  Rani caught the look. ‘What’s wrong?’

  The Pharos Institute was a scientific foundation that had been established over twenty years ago and worked in fields generally known as para-science — science that most men and women in white coats considered quackery. Ghosts, telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance — these were some of the areas in which Pharos scientists conducted their experiments. Sarah Jane didn’t believe in ghosts, but she applauded the Pharos scientists’ open-minded approach to establishing whether or not they existed. Some months ago they had been conducting experiments in the mind’s ability to move objects by thought. They had nearly ended with the moon crashing into Earth — thanks to the Slitheen and Mr Smith. And Luke.

  But the director of the institute, Professor Celeste Rivers, had been grateful for Sarah Jane’s intervention and her help in keeping its role in events quiet. Sarah Jane was pretty sure that Professor Rivers would remember that she owed her a favour.

  Yet there was little that they could do now, and Sarah Jane told Rani that she would walk her home.

  It was dark now, and the stars had come out in a clear, black velvet sky. As a child Sarah Jane had lain in bed gazing up at the star-strewn night sky, wondering what might be out there. In her wildest dreams she had never expected to one day find out.

  She looked up at them now, and so did Rani.

  ‘Up there, among the stars, and so much further beyond, there are countless fabulous worlds. There are fantastic civilizations. Life forms beyond our imagination. But there are those that are dangerous. That for whatever reason, mean us harm. I stop them. It’s what I do. I’ve done it for so long.’ Sarah Jane paused as she looked at Rani.

  Sarah Jane paused. ‘But if I could turn back time neither Luke nor Clyde would be involved. I don’t know if I’ll always be there to protect them.’ She looked at Rani and saw that she was already looking at her, understanding what she was saying: ‘You mean you don’t need another kid to worry about.’

  ‘No,’ Sarah Jane said, ‘I don’t.’

  ‘But I’m already involved. Odd Bob is coming after me and every other kid that had one of his tickets.’

  From her pocket Sarah Jane took a small metal device, and closed Rani’s fingers around it. ‘This is a Vorgatt defence held emitter. Turn it on and place it in the middle of your room. It will throw up a defence held that will stop anything getting in to harm you. Beyond that, make sure that you are never alone.’

  Rani looked at the small gizmo, ‘And that’s it?’

  Sarah Jane took Rani’s hands in her own. ‘And I promise you that I will stop Spellman.’

  Instinctively, Rani knew that Sarah Jane meant it, and — more than that — that she could. Whoever this strange woman really was, whatever had made her into this person, there was something about her that seemed almost invincible.

  ‘If you do stop him, you can’t expect me to live across the road and forget all about this.’

  ‘No. But I expect you to keep it a secret. To never tell anyone.’

  ‘Not even Mum and Dad?’

  Sarah Jane couldn’t help smiling. ‘Do you think they would believe you?’

  Rani smiled back, shaking her head, ‘No.’

  Sarah Jane caught that look in Rani’s eyes again, the look that in some strange way reminded her so much of herself when she had been that age, ‘Goodnight, Rani.’

  ‘Goodnight, Sarah Jane.’

  Sarah Jane stood on the pavement and watched Rani head towards her front door. She wanted to be sure that Rani was back in the house with her parents before she headed back to No. 13.

  At the door Rani turned back, ‘It’s amazing isn’t it?’

  Rani was looking up at the night sky again. ‘Aliens and everything. I mean, it’s scary. But it’s all real and that’s…’ For a moment, she struggled for the right word, the perfect word… ‘That’s amazing.’

  Sarah Jane felt a burst of warmth inside her. Despite the horrors that Rani had experienced today, what had really touched her were the wonders.

  ‘Yes, Rani. Yes, it is.’

  Chapter Nine

  The clown in the corner

  Sarah Jane returned to her house and closed the door behind her, and shuddered. She had told Rani that she would stop Spellman and Odd Bob, and she would if she could. She had lost count of the creatures from other worlds that she had encountered, some of them alone, some of them with the wonderful man she had once travelled the universe with. There had been things that were much more frightening than a clown in a striped costume. The Daleks were terrifying. The Cybermen turned her blood cold.

  The Trickster that had literally torn her out of reality had been fearsome. And she had been scared by all of them; fear was natural, and good — it was what sometimes kept you alive. But the terror she had felt this evening in the face of that malevolent clown had been
something else entirely. But what had scared her — what scared her now — was that the clown had somehow understood her fear.

  Clyde went home shortly after Sarah Jane got back to the house and after a quick supper Luke got ready for bed. Sarah Jane had three rules when it came to mixing home life and dealing with creatures from outer space — that they never discussed aliens at meal times; that they never got in the way of Luke’s homework; and that Luke was in bed by ten o’clock before a school day. Things didn’t always work out that way, of course, invading aliens rarely factored her son’s education into their invasion plans but Sarah Jane thought the principles were worth keeping. Tonight they worked and she kissed Luke goodnight a little before ten.

  But Luke wasn’t ready to go. He had something on his mind, and she could tell.

  ‘What is it?’ Sarah Jane asked.

  Luke hesitated. He had seen the look on Sarah Jane’s face as Odd Bob had borne down on her in the museum. And it had haunted him in the hours since.

  ‘Why do clowns scare you so much?’

  Sarah Jane looked at him and smiled gently. Her son had been born a teenager. He had never lain in bed at night terrified by his own imagination and the tricks his eyes played in the dark.

  Sarah Jane, like every child, knew how that felt.

  She knew only too well.

  She had barely known her parents. They had died in a car crash before her first birthday. For some reason that had never been explained they had left their baby in the care of a neighbour, had gone for a drive and were killed. Sarah Jane had then been brought up by her father’s sister, Lavinia.

  Professor Lavinia Smith was a virologist with a reputation that spanned the globe. She hadn’t married and had never intended to have children, believing she had more important things to do with her life. Motherhood hadn’t come naturally or easily to Lavinia when Sarah Jane came under the roof of her rambling Victorian home, but she had loved her in her way and did everything she could for her.

  The clown puppet had been one of Lavinia’s own toys when she was a girl and she had thought that Sarah Jane would love it. Sarah Jane had, in fact, always hated its creepy smile and its big black eyes but even at the age of five, when Lavinia had given her the precious toy, Sarah Jane didn’t want to offend her. And so the marionette hung in a corner in Sarah Jane’s bedroom. And every night when she went to bed Sarah Jane would try to avoid its grinning gaze.